


Like It's the Last Night

by Moebius



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/pseuds/Moebius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This takes place at some unspecified point in season two, with some flashbacks to the future.  Many thanks to the tinychatters for support as I pulled my hair out about my ability to write this character.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Like It's the Last Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noplacespecial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noplacespecial/gifts).



> This takes place at some unspecified point in season two, with some flashbacks to the future. Many thanks to the tinychatters for support as I pulled my hair out about my ability to write this character.

Derek remembered music. When he was sixteen, he wanted to be a baseball player and the lead guitarist of a rock band. And then the world ended and he became a soldier. But the music never really left him. In his lockbox was a collection of long-dead MP3 players that he picked up along the way. He collected anything that looks like it could have played music, even if he had never heard of it. iPods were easy. So were Zunes. But the box was full of things like Fuzes and Clips and things that were so battered he couldn’t even see the names any more. Wires, too, in case he one day found a place to plug them in. It didn’t matter to him what was on them, as long as it was from before Judgement Day.

He only heard two kinds of music in the world below the earth, where the last of humanity made its home. There was the hushed singing of the refugees, trying to keep their voices low in the building light of the morning. The morning was the time the robots patrolled less, because they were more easily spotted by the scouts. Derek never got close enough to the small groups of people to hear what they were singing. He couldn’t bear it.

The soldiers’ music was different. They sang deeply and strongly, someone beating out the rhythm of the song on a burnished metal barrel. Each song was ten songs mashed together to make something new. They didn’t sing sadly, they sang with hope. And every song about a hero replaced the name with John Connor or Kyle Reese or whatever soldier had just saved the day in the last mission. Derek listened, but he never sang with them. It never felt right.

Jessie sang to him once. Some old song from some Australian pop group he’d never heard about. He looked at her silently for a moment and then asked her never to do it again. She never did, and she never asked why. He loved her for it.  


* * *

  
In the world before Judgment Day, the world he comes back to, Derek’s second act of business is to get himself some music. He listens to it whenever he’s alone, but he’s careful not to let anyone else know about it. Music remains his secret, solitary world; it’s his safe space where he can live in a world that never died.

He has no favorites. He clings to each song in each moment and lets it transport him. He wonders what everyone would say if they saw him like this. John would look at him, confused. Sarah would raise an eyebrow and shake her head. And the machine... it wouldn’t understand. Derek hopes it wouldn’t understand.

For a long time, though, doesn’t tell anyone. He can’t bring himself to share his world with them, especially if it means _it_ might find out.

But then, one night, he sees it dancing. Its body is graceful, which doesn’t surprise him. It was built to kill, and her kind of killing requires a certain amount of grace. No, he’s not surprised. He’s scared.

Machines don’t dance unless it’s part of their programming. But how could it be part of its programming to dance when it thinks there’s no audience? There’s no point. It doesn’t need _practice_.

The image of the machine dancing, and the questions that it brings, haunt him enough that he finds himself purposefully going by its room more often. Sometimes he sees her - _it_ , he tells himself - dancing, and sometimes he doesn’t. He starts to learn the routine, the music, and the best times to wander by. He listens to more classical music, and pictures great ballets of machines and men dancing against each other across the stage. Weeks go by and he stops thinking of the machine as an it and starts thinking of it as a girl.

He goes to the gun range more to make up for whatever is happening to him. It almost helps.

“I know you are there,” she says one night. He almost falls backwards in surprise. “I know you have been watching me for eighteen days, and have attempted to watch on several other occasions.”

Derek coughs uncomfortably and steps around the corner into her room. “Yeah, well. I’m making sure you don’t do anything suspicious.”

“I do the same thing every night.” She raises one eyebrow. He swears she got that from Sarah. “You know that. It is your behavior that would be considered suspicious.”

“Go to hell. I’m the human here.” Derek has no idea why he’s more annoyed at her than usual. He turns on his heel and storms out, brushing past John in the hallway, and ignoring the questioning look on his nephew’s face.

He goes to see Jessie, but she’s not there, so he goes to shoot some things instead.

It helps, but only a little.  


* * *

  
Derek avoids Cameron’s room for a few days. He spends his time in the garage, counting ammo and polishing guns. He loses himself in the routine, and doesn’t bring any music with him. Music reminds him of the machine-girl, and he doesn’t want that right now.

He’s sawing the barrel of a shotgun when she comes into the garage. She’s carrying something in her hand, and he tenses his hand around the butt of the gun, finger inching towards the trigger. She raises her arm and he sees a small speaker and a pink iPod.

“You like pink?”

She stares at him silently, and he curses under his breath for asking a stupid question like that. He’s actually glad when she ignores him. “I wish to dance.”

“So?” Derek shrugs. “You seem to have free reign. What’s stopping you?”

“No,” she replies, voice tight. “I wish to dance with you.”

Now it’s Derek’s turn to stare. “What the fuck do you want to do that for?”

“You will be a good dancer.”

There’s something about the way she says it that makes him want to run away. But Derek doesn’t like running away, especially not from machines. Even machines that look like women. Even machines that are asking him to dance. “I don’t dance like you dance.”

Cameron has turned to place the iPod on the bench. She starts a song. Sinatra. Derek’s always secretly liked Sinatra, but he doesn’t want to ask her how she knows. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. “I don’t want to dance that way with you. I want to dance this way.”

It has to be a coincidence.

She’s standing, waiting expectantly. Derek realizes that he hasn’t moved a muscle since she started the song. He has no idea what he should do. It bugs him that he doesn’t want to shoot her. It terrifies him that he actually wants to go and dance with her. She doesn’t move at all, just stands still, arms at her sides, waiting. He knows that if he tells her no she’ll turn around and leave.

He doesn’t tell her no.

There’s a grimace plastered to his face as he sets the shotgun down and walks over to Cameron. He pulls her arms up, puts one on his shoulder and the other at his waist, and then he starts to lead her around the garage.

It’s not until the song’s over that he realizes the grimace is gone and he’s smiling. She’s not - of course she’s not - but she almost looks... content. Derek tells himself he’s imaging it.

“Thank you,” she says matter-of-factly. “I was correct. You’re a good dancer.”

Derek shrugs, but he looks away. “Yeah, thanks. Listen, don’t tell anyone. I - don’t want people to know I dance with machines.”

“You listen to music often.”

“That’s private,” he snaps. He doesn’t deny it, though.

“I enjoy music.”

“Sure, okay.”

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out an old, battered music player. He recognizes it immediately as one of the ones from his lockbox. “Where’d you get this?”

“You know.” Cameron has gathered her iPod and her speaker, and is halfway to the door. “I fixed it. It will play.”

She leaves, and Derek collapses onto the bench, head in his hands. His secret world isn’t so secret any more. Maybe it hasn’t been for a long time. It bothers him that it doesn’t bother him.

The next night, when Cameron dances, he walks into her room.

He closes the door behind him and doesn’t come out for a long time.


End file.
